tag: Lam

Fab tools and test
Four former employees at Applied Materials were charged by the U.S. for allegedly trying to steal the company’s own fab tool technology designs, according to a report from Bloomberg and others. The former employees were allegedly trying to sell the technology to a Chinese startup that would compete against Applied, according to the report.
The former employees--Liang C... » read more

Market research
For some time, DRAM shortages have plagued the market. Today, the situation remains the same. DRAMs are seeing strong demand. But yet, vendors are not adding any capacity. “Strained DRAM supply was even more evident during the third quarter as limited production capacity and limited technological progress for the memory industry encountered robust demand from data centers in ... » read more

Variation between different manufacturing equipment is becoming increasingly troublesome as chipmakers push to 10/7nm and beyond.
Process variation is a well-known phenomenon at advanced nodes. But some of that is actually due to variations in equipment—sometimes the exact same model from the same vendor. Normally this would fall well below the radar of the semiconductor industry. But as t... » read more

Chipmakers
Toshiba has changed its mind yet again about which group will buy its prized memory unit. On June 20, Toshiba chose a Japanese government-led consortium of INCJ/DBJ, Bain Capital and South Korea’s SK Hynix. Then, Toshiba changed its mind and selected a similar group with Western Digital (WDC), leaving SK Hynix on the outside looking in.
This week, Toshiba signed a deal with a ... » read more

In a move to expand its product portfolio, Lam Research has acquired Coventor, a provider of simulation and modeling solutions for the semiconductor and MEMS industries.
With the acquisition of Coventor, fab tool vendor Lam enters the simulation and modeling technology market. Coventor sells the so-called SEMulator3D modeling and analysis platform, which simulates a fab process flow. The “... » read more

China is pouring billions of dollars into its semiconductor industry and is building several new fabs. As reported, China is bolstering its IC industry for good reason. China is trying to reduce its huge trade imbalance in ICs. The country continues to import a large percentage of its chips from foreign vendors.
Behind the scenes, China also continues to develop its domestic semiconductor eq... » read more

The lithography market is in flux. Today, chipmakers plan to extend today’s 193nm immersion lithography and multi-patterning to at least 10nm and 7nm. For the most critical layers, though, it’s unclear if optical lithography can extend beyond 7nm. For that reason, chipmakers hope to insert extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at 7nm and/or 5nm. To get a handle on the state of patterning, S... » read more

Chipmakers
Recently, Intel announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. Targeted for 7nm processes, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years. As reported, the fab announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House.
There is more to the story. Typically, Intel has two fabs for a gi... » read more

Chipmakers
Faced with a huge write-down at its nuclear operations, Toshiba is looking to spin off its semiconductor division, which makes NAND. As expected, Toshiba seeks investors in the new company, according to Nikkei. Western Digital (WD) is one potential investor. Foxconn is another possible investor, according to CNBC.
Peregrine Semiconductor has rolled out its latest RF SOI process.... » read more

Chipmakers
Next month, GlobalFoundries will host a job fair in Portland, Ore., according to reports. The company hopes to hire former Intel workers. These are workers who lost their jobs as part of Intel's recent layoff.
Anokiwave, a developer of chips for the mmWave market, has announced a foundry alliance with GlobalFoundries. GlobalFoundries will make so-called Silicon Core chips on a f... » read more